Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: video

In the beginning

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When I started this blog, I had a grandiose idea of what I wanted to do. The topics are based on the days of the week. Musings for Monday and Fun for Fridays. etc. It was a good idea, but I ended up pretty much just ignoring it and writing about whatever I wanted to write. Because that’s me. That’s always me. I’m both very rigid and very not-rigid. I’m rigid in that I like to follow a routine. I get up, do  my hour of Taiji in the same order with only the weapons rotating each day (parts of it), feed Shadow, get the coffee going, and then clean Shadow’s litterboxes. I also take my meds and brush my teeth in there.

I message Ian, check the RKG Discord, do the Wordle and then the Octordle for the day,  all the while having videos in the background. I write my post for the day, then work for my brother. I play some games, then do my fiction/memoir writing. 2,000 words. That’s what I do every day. Of course, I feed Shadow two more times during the day (breakfast, lunch, supper). He also have a bowl of dry kibble that he can eat throughout the day and  two bowls of water. I also leave water in the bathroom sinks because he likes to drink from those as well.

That’s my daily schedule. However, what time all that actually happens at wildly varies from day to day. I woke up late today 10:30 a.m. and didn’t really get rolling (after my Taiji routine) until 1:30 p.m. because I had to run to Cubs and there was some drama there. Apparently, they had just started a stamp program and did not train the cashiers how to use them. My favorite cashier had to deal with it with the person before me and complained to me afterwards.

Now that I’m changing things up and going to migrate to video (hopefully), I think I need to be more structured about what I do.  But, again, this is fighting in my brain. I am rebelling at the idea of following a schedule, but the pragmatic side of me says I have to build a brand.

I know that the most successful way of being a content creator is to find a niche and flog the hell out of it. Make everything related to that niche and go buck wild. Have merch,  will sell it. It’s the tried-and-true way of doing it (tried-and-true for a job that is a decade old, really).

There are variety content creators, but it’s still within a topic. Like video games. Someone can be a, say, a Pokemon streamer. Or someone could be streaming games, but different ones. Maybe in a genre or maybe not. Or someone streams indie games.


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Open world in real life

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Despite my rebellious nature, I tend to follow the rules more often than not. I am not going around being lawless willy and nilly. I mean, I guess you could say my whole life is against the rules to some people. I have not managed to hit one ‘normal’ milestone–and, yes, I’m proud of it Not in the ‘give it to the man’ sort of way, but that I managed to hold firm to my own values despite great pressure from my mom–e,r society. But mostly my mom.

In video games, there is a genre of games called open world games. You can probably guess from the name that the world is, indeed, open–although that can be interpreted differently in different games. Mostly, it means that you can go anywhere you want at any time instead of having to progress down a linear path. The problem with many of them is that in order to fill the world, they add repetitive quests that you just do over and over (such as collect fifteen feathers in each section. Or they make you get things for people, snidely known as fetch quests. Or even worse, you have to escort someone somewhere and they walk at half your speed. Looking at you, Skyrim. I didn’t realize just how annoying that was until I played The Witcher 3 in which the NPCs jog along at a brisk pace.

Side Note: I cannot wait to play Elden Ring which is basically an open world Dark Souls IV. I will admit trepidation about it being open world, though, because the many dungeons dotted around the world have been described as this game’s version of Chalice Dungeons. Which I hated. Absolutely hated. Someone in the RKG posted that in his opinion (because of course it was a him), you hadn’t really beaten Bloodborne if you didn’t do the Chalice Dungeons. Which, I mean….I hate gatekeeping in general. Saying someone isn’t a true such-and-such fan if they don’t do x, y, or z annoys the fuck out of me. In this case, the Chalice Dungeons are mostly for grinding. Yes, there is at least one unique boss in them (can’t remember if there are more), but it’s still mostly for grinding. I tried to do them, but I just found them confusing and boring. One thing I like about FromSoftt games is how different each area is. All. The. Chalice. Dungeons. Are. The. Same. I got hopelessly lost in them and I gave up after doing…I don’t even remember which dungeon. My favorite outfit is in the dungeons, but fortunately, early on. (Bone Ash Set.)


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The Politics of Art

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So, I love to write. A lot. Prolifically. Garrulous. It’s the equivalent to a chatterbox who cannot keep her mouth shut. I can’t keep my fingers from banging away at my keyboard, and I have many broken keyboards to prove it. In fact, this one (on my laptop) is on its last legs, and I should replace it pretty soon. The problem is, people are reading less and less. Rather, they’re reading less of actual longform pieces and novels. I’m old woman shaking my fist at the clouds, but I also acknowledge that it’s probably not going backwards any time soon.

What’s the new big thing? Videos. Streaming. It’s all the rage with the kids these days, an it’s something I’ve thought about doing myself. The problem is, first of all, I hate the way I look on camera. Now, of course, I could stream a game without face-cam, but from what I’ve seen, you get more views with the face-cam on, especially as a woman. Which, therein, is my second issue. The world of video games is still a man’s world with a very bro-y culture. I don’t watch streams on Twitch (except Ian’s! twitch.tv/eenbou) because the chats are fucking toxic. I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s sadly true. Anything over ten viewers, and it’s ‘fuckbois’, ‘faggot’, and ‘i’d fuck that ass’ all the damn time. There’s a streamer I did watch occasionally when he wasn’t too big yet, and I already felt not included by dint of being a woman in my forties. I watched a vod of a recent stream, and he’d changed from being low-key and lovable to low-key and ‘fuckbois’, and it really disappointed me. I’m not naming  him because it’s not him–it’s the ethos of chat. I’m stil working on my Theory of Dudes in which the more dudes you have in one place, the grosser the culture becomes.

Anyway, I watched a podcast with four female streamers, and they were emphatic about not being just boob jigglers, but one of them is known for that, and another is known for being bro-y in her chat. They were all young and conventionally pretty, which is another double standard for women who stream. Dudes can be any age, shape, size, or look, but the women have to be young, not fat, and hot. In addition, most of the female streamers are even bro-y-er than their male counterparts as a way to overcompensate. It’s the same with streamers girlfriends/wives. They put down women, make sexual innuendos, and are pretty jerky. They also feed into the stereotypes of the nagging wife, which is annoying as hell as well.


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